Could I please bring your attention to Symphony (if you have not already seen it).
It STILL has not been released, but it has a very (VERY) nice feature of app casting.
There is a menu in the admin area that lets you 'browse' and 'purchase' available plugins (extensions) for the Symphony system.
Sjould we have something like this for Vanilla?
I understand this COULD put quite a load on Marks server, but, what the hell?
The 'browser' extension, manages all other extensions, and calls home periodically (once a day. offset the times, so we TRY not the kill the server) to check for updates of CURRENTLY active extensions. tehre is no point yet, to look for all available extensions.
When the admin DOES descide to look for NEW/ AVAILABLE extensions for their system (maybe even version... looking down the track here), it displays them in a list, with links for more info (ajax here to cut page loads) and to download. If they choose to download, it handles the request, and saves a copy into the extensions (possibly styles) folder.
My take on this application is probably another one of those universal blogger tools that plugs into the api framework autonomously. In a sense, removing the browser from the equation but still acting like one to edit and manipulate threads/postings/etc. I remember back in the day many online applications were hailed for things like this but at the same time introduced a couple of bugs and security holes for a short time.
That is relativly what symphony is touting to be as well, and a bit more, am I right? I can't say I'm much of a fan of these little niche tools unless it is overly-useful and stays updated. Last time I remember most of the apps created to play middleware like this fell dead in the water and have since been customized for certain tasks.
From what i quickly manage to skim through, the symphony demo didn't seem to really impress me all too much. It looked like just another blogger tool that sits on your server looking like most of the rest.